International Year of Biodiversity

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity

You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places they live and their surrounding environments, all over the world.

You rely on this diversity of life to provide you with the food, fuel, medicine and other essentials you simply cannot live without. Yet this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated rate because of human activities. This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on which we depend, to resist growing threats such as climate change.

The United Nations proclaimed 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity, and people all over the world are working to safeguard this irreplaceable natural wealth and reduce biodiversity loss. This is vital for current and future human wellbeing. We need to do more. Now is the time to act.

The International Year of Biodiversity is a unique opportunity to increase understanding of the vital role that biodiversity plays in sustaining life on Earth. ~ International Year of Biodiversity.

Here we are 3 months into 2010 and this is the first I’ve heard of this…The International Year of Biodiversity…

Humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it.

The first thing I have see was an email this morning from the Encyclopedia of Life…

Nearly a decade ago, the United Nations announced that 2010 would be deemed the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB). Global biodiversity, or the web of life, is estimated to include 13 million species—only 10% have been identified thus far.

A highlight of the IYB program will be the Tenth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October, 2010. In addition to establishing goals for post-2010 global conservation efforts, conference participants will assess the international progress made toward conserving biodiversity. ~ EOL Newsletter.

As I read the news each day, it seems I see more and more how the biodiversity of the earth is being threatened by the actions of … Us. Our actions are almost at war with biodiversity, especially here in the United States. Our industrial agricultural practices, our resource “management” practices (mining, forestry, water), even our living habits all seem to be geared toward limiting the biodiversity we encounter. Whether it is our monoculture farms, our clear-cut forests, or even our manmade lakes that inundate thousands of acres of unique biologically diverse waterways, we tend towards destructive use of our environments.

So…I look forward to seeing what this International Year of Biodiversity will bring in the way of focusing our attention on what it is we may be losing if we don’t wake up. I’ll have my eyes open for more news now that I am aware of the significance of the year…

Oh, by the way, 2011 is the International Year of Forests. Start thinking about it now.

2 thoughts on “International Year of Biodiversity”

This reminds of those ads for some sort of product (obviously forgettable) but the gist of it was that it’s not nice to try and fool mother nature. Of course, one can’t ultimately fool mother nature, as we have learned all too well.